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Excel 2010: Where It Came From 1 Excel 2010: Where It Came From In This Chapter ● Exploring the history of spreadsheets ● Discussing Excel’s evolution ● Analyzing why Excel is a good tool for developers A Brief History of Spreadsheets Most people tend to take spreadsheet software for granted. In fact, it may be hard to fathom, but there really was a time when electronic spreadsheets weren’t available. Back then, people relied instead on clumsy mainframes or calculators and spent hours doing what now takes minutes. It all started with VisiCalc The world’s first electronic spreadsheet, VisiCalc, was conjured up by Dan Bricklin and Bob Frankston back in 1978, when personal computers were pretty much unheard of in the office environment. VisiCalc was written for the Apple II computer, which was an interesting little machine that is something of a toy by today’s standards. (But in its day, the Apple II kept me mesmerized for days at aCOPYRIGHTED time.) VisiCalc essentially laid theMATERIAL foundation for future spreadsheets, and you can still find its row-and-column-based layout and formula syntax in modern spread- sheet products. VisiCalc caught on quickly, and many forward-looking companies purchased the Apple II for the sole purpose of developing their budgets with VisiCalc. Consequently, VisiCalc is often credited for much of the Apple II’s initial success. In the meantime, another class of personal computers was evolving; these PCs ran the CP/M operating system. A company called Sorcim developed SuperCalc, which was a spreadsheet that also attracted a legion of followers. 11 005_475355-ch01.indd5_475355-ch01.indd 1111 33/31/10/31/10 77:30:30 PMPM 12 Part I: Some Essential Background When the IBM PC arrived on the scene in 1981, legitimizing personal computers, VisiCorp wasted no time porting VisiCalc to this new hardware environment, and Sorcim soon followed with a PC version of SuperCalc. By current standards, both VisiCalc and SuperCalc were extremely crude. For example, text entered into a cell couldn’t extend beyond the cell — a lengthy title had to be entered into multi- ple cells. Nevertheless, the ability to automate the budgeting tedium was enough to lure thou- sands of accountants from paper ledger sheets to floppy disks. You can download a copy of the original VisiCalc from Dan Bricklin’s Web site at www. bricklin.com. And yes, nearly 30 years later, this 27K program still runs on today’s PCs (see Figure 1-1). Figure 1-1: VisiCalc, running in a DOS window on a PC running Windows XP. Lotus 1-2-3 Envious of VisiCalc’s success, a small group of computer freaks at a start-up company in Cambridge, Massachusetts, refined the spreadsheet concept. Headed by Mitch Kapor and Jonathan Sachs, the company designed a new product and launched the software industry’s first full-fledged marketing blitz. I remember seeing a large display ad for 1-2-3 in The Wall Street Journal. It was the first time that I’d ever seen software advertised in a general interest publication. Released in January 1983, Lotus Development Corporation’s 1-2-3 was an instant success. Despite its $495 price tag (which is probably close to $1,000 in today’s dollars), it quickly outsold VisiCalc, rocketing to the top of the sales charts, where it remained for many years. What Lotus did right Lotus 1-2-3 improved on all the basics embodied in VisiCalc and SuperCalc and was also the first program to take advantage of the new and unique features found in the powerful 16-bit IBM PC AT. For example, 1-2-3 bypassed the slower DOS calls and wrote text directly to display memory, 005_475355-ch01.indd5_475355-ch01.indd 1212 33/31/10/31/10 77:30:30 PMPM Chapter 1: Excel 2010: Where It Came From 13 giving it a snappy and responsive feel that was unusual for the time. The online help system was a breakthrough, and the ingenious “moving bar” menu style set the standard for many years. One feature that really set 1-2-3 apart, though, was its macro capability — a powerful tool that enabled spreadsheet users to record their keystrokes to automate many procedures. When such a macro was “played back,” the original keystrokes were sent to the application, and it was like a super-fast typist was at the keyboard. Although a far cry from today’s macro capability, 1-2-3 macros were definitely a step in the right direction. 1-2-3 was not the first integrated package, but it was the first successful one. It combined (1) a powerful electronic spreadsheet with (2) elementary graphics and (3) some limited but handy database features. Easy as 1, 2, 3 — get it? Lotus followed up the original 1-2-3 Release 1 with Release 1A in April 1983. This product enjoyed tremendous success and put Lotus in the enviable position of virtually owning the spreadsheet market. In September 1985, Release 1A was replaced by Release 2, which was a major upgrade that was superseded by the bug-fixed Release 2.01 the following July. Release 2 introduced add- ins, which are special-purpose programs that can be attached to give an application new features and extend the application’s useful life. Release 2 also had improved memory management, more functions, 8,192 rows (four times as many as its predecessor), and added support for a math coprocessor. Release 2 also included some significant enhancements to the macro language. Not surprisingly, the success of 1-2-3 spawned many clones — work-alike products that usually offered a few additional features and sold at a much lower price. Among the more notable were Paperback Software’s VP Planner series and Mosaic Software’s Twin. Lotus eventually took legal action against Paperback Software for copyright infringement (for copying the “look and feel” of 1-2-3); the successful suit essentially put Paperback out of business. In the summer of 1989, Lotus shipped DOS and OS/2 versions of the long-delayed 1-2-3 Release 3. This product literally added a dimension to the familiar row-and-column-based spreadsheet: It extended the paradigm by adding multiple spreadsheet pages. The idea wasn’t really new, how- ever; a relatively obscure product called Boeing Calc originated the 3-D spreadsheet concept, and SuperCalc 5 and CubeCalc also incorporated it. 1-2-3 Release 3 offered features that users wanted — features that ultimately became standard fare: multilayered worksheets, the capability to work with multiple files simultaneously, file link- ing, improved graphics, and direct access to external database files. But it still lacked an impor- tant feature that users were begging for: a way to produce high-quality printed output. Release 3 began life with a reduced market potential because it required an 80286-based PC and a minimum of 1MB of RAM — fairly hefty requirements in 1989. But Lotus had an ace up its corpo- rate sleeve. Concurrent with the shipping of Release 3, the company surprised nearly everyone by announcing an upgrade of Release 2.01. (The product materialized a few months later as 1-2-3 Release 2.2.) Release 3 was not a replacement for Release 2, as most analysts had expected. Rather, Lotus made the brilliant move of splitting the spreadsheet market into two segments: those with high-end hardware and those with more mundane equipment. 005_475355-ch01.indd5_475355-ch01.indd 1313 33/31/10/31/10 77:30:30 PMPM 14 Part I: Some Essential Background Too little, too late 1-2-3 Release 2.2 wasn’t a panacea for spreadsheet buffs, but it was a significant improvement. The most important Release 2.2 feature was Allways, an add-in that gave users the ability to churn out attractive reports, complete with multiple typefaces, borders, and shading. In addition, users could view the results on-screen in a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) manner. Allways didn’t, however, let users issue any worksheet commands while they viewed and formatted their work in WYSIWYG mode. Despite this rather severe limitation, many 1-2-3 users were overjoyed with this new capability because they could finally produce near-typeset-quality output. In May 1990, Microsoft released Windows 3.0. As you probably know, Windows changed the way that people used personal computers. Apparently, the decision-makers at Lotus weren’t con- vinced that Windows was a significant product, and the company was slow getting out of the gate with its first Windows spreadsheet, 1-2-3 for Windows, which wasn’t introduced until late 1991. Worse, this product was, in short, a dud. It didn’t really capitalize on the Windows environ- ment and disappointed many users. It also disappointed at least one book author. My very first book was titled PC World 1-2-3 For Windows Complete Handbook (Wiley). I think it sold fewer than 1,000 copies. Serious competition from Lotus never materialized. Consequently, Excel, which had already established itself as the premier Windows spreadsheet, became the overwhelming Windows spreadsheet market leader and has never left that position. Lotus came back with 1-2-3 Release 4 for Windows in June 1993, which was a vast improvement over the original. Release 5 for Windows appeared in mid-1994. Also in mid-1994, Lotus unveiled 1-2-3 Release 4.0 for DOS. Many analysts (including myself) expected a product more compatible with the Windows product. But we were wrong; DOS Release 4.0 was simply an upgraded version of Release 3.4. Because of the widespread accep- tance of Windows, that was the last DOS version of 1-2-3 to see the light of day.
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